CHORNOBYL SURVEY: Books in print

Following is a collection of capsulized reviews of books about the Chornobyl nuclear disaster and its aftermath. Precis of books listed were prepared by Andrij Wynnyckyj. (Prices listed are in U.S. dollars. The publications of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press may be ordered directly from their publication offices in Toronto, at 416-978-6934.)

Ablaze: The Story of Chernobyl

Piers Paul Read

(New York: Random House, 1993), 478 pp.; ISBN 0-679-40819, $25 hardcover.

Best-selling author Piers Paul Read (who wrote "Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors") provides a readable and well-researched account ranging from the early days of Soviet nuclear experimentation, through the moments of panic among the operators on the fateful night, through the clean-up operations and trials of the technicians, as well as an account of the environmental movement led by Yuri Shcherbak. He ends with the coup that toppled Mikhail Gorbachev from power and brought about the dissolution of the USSR.

Chernobyl: A Documentary Story

Yuri (Iurii) Shcherbak (translated by Ian Press foreword by David R. Marples)

(London: The Macmillan Press, in association with CIUS Press, 1989), 168 pp.; ISBN 0-333-49666-3, $20 hardcover; ISBN 0-333-49667-1, $10 paperback.

This is an eyewitness account by the writer and epidemiologist who rose to lead the Zelenyi Svit movement, then become Ukraine's first minister of the environment, ambassador to Israel and now serves as the ambassador to the U.S.

Drawing on interviews he conducted in the field, Dr. Shcherbak recounts fellow Literaturna Hazeta correspondent Liubov Kovalevska's frustrations in seeking to reveal the reactor's flaws prior to the accident; the firemen who went headlong into the nuclear monster's maw; the initial decisions to keep the stricken town of Prypiat under a blanket of silence; how Kyiv was kept in the dark about the accident's consequences until May 6; U.S. bone marrow transplant specialist Dr. Robert Gale's mission; the musings of the sobered technocrat Valeriy Legasov, who was to commit suicide soon after.

The author stresses scientists' responsibility for their discoveries and the role of a humanitarian education in literature, art and moral sensibility rather than merely in technology, and agrees with Dr. Gale that the accident was humanity's "final warning."

Chernobyl and its Aftermath: A Selected Bibliography

Jurij Dobczansky (foreword by David R. Marples)

(Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1988), 17 pp; $5.

A somewhat dated but still useful listing of 90 articles, 25 English-language monographs, 33 non-English publications, and 26 governmental and non-governmental reports.

Chernobyl and Nuclear Power in the USSR

David R. Marples

(Edmonton: CIUS Press, 1986), 228 pp.; ISBN 0-920862-48-9, $39.95 hardcover; ISBN 0-920862-50-0, $14.95 paperback.

In this document of cautious Sovietology, the author provides a history of the Soviet regime's shift away from oil and coal energy toward a massive expansion of its civilian nuclear power program, explains how this shift affected its relations with satellite countries in Eastern Europe, and sketches the safety difficulties emerging from the USSR's hurry-up program.

In his treatment of the disaster itself, Dr. Marples sets the scene with a sketch of the plant's labor force suffering from demoralization and lack of discipline. He then gives a blow-by-blow Western-eye view of how the full scope of the accident came to light.

Treatments of the disaster's aftermath concentrate on the political consequences for central Soviet and local republican authorities. A measure of the work's caution, and of how far the author himself has moved as the scope of the incident became more widely known, is one of the book's conclusions: "Chernobyl, even in terms of long-term casualties, will not be the world's worst accident... And at present there have been few indications either that Chernobyl will change anything or that it will be the last such nuclear disaster."

Chernobyl: A Policy Response Study

Boris Segerstahl, editor

(New York: Springer-Verlag, 1991), 180 pp.; ISBN 0-387-53465-2, $59 hardcover.

Part of an International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis' series on European environmental management, this book consists of eight concise and focused studies of Chernobyl's impact on the European environment (including agriculture), the population's health, the international nuclear safety regime, and on human perception and response (including an examination of the media's role) to the disaster.

Perhaps the most sobering contribution is that of Marc Poumadère of the SYMLOG Institute in France, titled "The Credibility Crisis." Among Dr. Poumadère's conclusions:

"Some researchers report that public opinion [about nuclear power] in Europe is regaining its pre-Chernobyl position. This should not be regarded by anyone as good news; it may signify that social amnesia is developing. In this case, Chernobyl will have served for little in terms of learning, preparedness and social solidarity."

The Chernobyl Disaster

Viktor Haynes, Marko Bojcun

(London: Hogarth Press, 1988), 233 pp.; ISBN 0-7012-0816-3, price not available.

This is a book that pulls no punches in condemning the Soviet regime's over-all damage to the ecology, the bankruptcy of glasnost as "a limited opening-up of the ruling elite in the interests of crisis management and continued stability," the complicity of Mikhail Gorbachev and his Politburo in the cover-up following the accident, and the Western nuclear power industry's "perverse" urge to describe the cancers caused by Chornobyl as "insignificant" compared to those from other causes. This work also provides an interesting sketch of the radicalization of Ukraine's Writers' Union in the aftermath of the accident.

Chernobyl: Insight from the Inside

Vladimir Chernousenko

(New York: Springer-Verlag, 1991), 367 pp.; ISBN 0-387-53638-8, $34 trade paperback.

Vladimir Chernousenko served as scientific director of the clean-up project as a scientist from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, from which he was dismissed after he began revealing his observations. In 1993, he was diagnosed with terminal radiation poisoning.

Mr. Chernousenko's revelations include that the accident was caused by design flaws - not operator error, that thousands had died during the clean-up and that radiation poisoning had a widespread impact on immune system disorders, thyroid cancers, etc.

Chernobyl: The End of the Nuclear Dream

Nigel Hawkes, Geoffrey Lean et al.

(New York: Random House, 1987), 246 pp.; ISBN 0-394-75107-8, $4.95 paperback.

A team of reporters from the London Observer, led by its senior diplomatic correspondent and author of other books on nuclear power (Nigel Hawkes), as well as the daily's environment correspondent (Geoffrey Lean), give background information on the nature of radiation, its discovery, background on developing peaceful uses of the atom and on its long-observed lethal effects.

The book surveys problems within nuclear power programs of the U.S., Britain, France and other countries. It focuses in particular on the ostensible economic unviability of nuclear power, and demonstrates that all countries have engaged in secrecy about risks, exposure of their population to radiation during tests and to radioactive discharges at accidents such as the British Windscale plant and U.S. Three Mile Island. The book provides background to Chornobyl, previous accidents in the Soviet Union, description of the accident scenario, emergency response and impact of the radiation cloud on Europe.

It also gives a lively description of media coverage disparities between the U.S. and the European press, and sketches how information about the accident spread throughout the Eastern Bloc countries.

Chernobyl: The Final Warning

Robert P. Gale, Thomas Hauser

(New York: Warner Books, 1988), 213 pp.; ISBN 0-446-39008-9, $12.95 trade paperback.

The author is the "bone-marrow doctor" who achieved international fame for his Armand Hammer-funded efforts to save the lives of Chornobyl clean-up workers treated at Moscow's Hospital No. 6, and then notoriety for his paralyzing self-importance and willingness to swallow the Soviet spin on the "need for secrecy."

Dr. Gale's surgical exploits and statements, such as "We have to understand that most Soviet citizens don't see themselves as living in a police state," are recorded here.

All this notwithstanding, the book also includes a stirring call for international nuclear disarmament and an appeal to soberly examine the dangers of the atom.

Chernobyl: The Forbidden Truth

Alla Yaroshinska (translated by Michele Kahn, Julia Sallabank; introduction by David R. Marples, foreword by John Gofman)

(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 136 pp.; ISBN 0-8032-4912-8, $25 hardcover; ISBN 0-8032-9910-9, $10 trade paperback.

Alla Yaroshinska begins with an impassioned personal memoir of the terror-filled immediate aftermath of the accident when the Zhytomyr railway station "resembled an Exodus" of people frantically seeking to send their children to safety.

She then shifts to a description of her efforts to cover the plight of those living in "the Zone of Lies" as yet not evacuated by a government unwilling to face the consequences of the dispersion of radiation.

Then she champions the courage of Yelena Burlakova, who challenged the Soviet scientific establishment by insisting on the dangers of chronic low-level radiation; recounts how the lid was ripped off the government's attempts to hide the RBMK reactor's design flaws and pin all blame on the operators; returns to the "zone of strict control" and confronts the criminality of Ukraine's health officials.

The book ends with a searing indictment of the regime's "Six Big Lies" and a precis of the Politburo minutes implicating the USSR's top echelon in a cover-up - information the author obtained after her election to the Supreme Soviet in 1989.

Chernobyl: The Long Shadow

Chris C. Park

(London/New York: Routlege, 1989), 207 pp.; ISBN 0-415-03553-8, $39.95 hardcover.

This is a European view on the implications for Soviet foot-dragging in not notifying the world community about the accident; technical aspects of the Chornobyl fallout cloud, with numerous maps and graphs outlining dispersal of radio-isotopes, wind directions and the like; and the accident's impact on public attitudes to nuclear power.

Chernobyl: The Real Story

Richard F. Mould

(Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), 255 pp.; ISBN 0-08-035719-9, price not available.

Essentially, this is a Soviet-sanctioned version of the accident and its aftermath, with plenty of TASS and Novosti photographs, a scattershot rendering of facts presented by the Soviets before the IAEA's post-Chornobyl conference, accounts of the clean-up effort, Mikhail Gorbachev's radio address denouncing Western media coverage, a chronology of events baldly illustrating that Pravda's and Izvestia's brief mention of the accident did not appear until May 7, 1986.

The book includes paraphrases of Western newstories with exaggerated casualty counts, photomontages ridiculing international protests and countermeasures against contamination.

The Ecology of the Chernobyl Catastrophe

Vladimir K. Savchenko

(New York: Parthenon Publishing, UNESCO, 1995), 200 pp.; ISBN 1-85070-656-5, $85 hardcover.

Prof. Savchenko, a member of Belarus's Academy of Sciences and a geneticist by training, now works in the United Nations' Education, Scientific and Cultural Organ-ization (UNESCO) Ecological Sciences division in Paris.

The book provides a useful and comprehensive, if dryly scientific, rundown of Chornobyl's impact on the natural and agricultural ecosystems (with chapters devoted to human ecology, biological diversity and genetic systems), and includes a sketch of the work of the Chornobyl Ecological Science Network, a UNESCO agency that aims to coordinate research in the field by scientists in Europe, North America and Asia.

The work's principal theses are that children who are still living in the affected area are especially sensitive to irradiation, that there are trans-generational genetic consequences, and that the impact on humans was much more serious than estimated by the nuclear power industry.

"This is the first time the world has been faced with radionuclide pollution of natural ecosystems on such a large scale... the radioactivity released by the Chernobyl accident will never disappear completely from the biosphere, and most of its long-term effects will only become known as time goes on," the author writes.

Journey to Chernobyl: Encounters in a Radioactive Zone

Glenn Alan Cheney

(Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1995), 191 pp.; ISBN 0-89733-418-3, $20 hardcover.

According to The Weekly's review (April 28, 1996): "Mr. Cheney has compiled an impressive oral history of the events that occurred at Chornobyl at the end of April and the beginning of May 1986, as explained by the liquidators and people who lived in the area...

"The reader gets a first-hand accounting of what went on at ground zero from Borys Stolyarchuk, who was at one of the control boards near the area in the reactor where the fatal experiment that caused the blast took place."

Other subjects of interviews include a resident of Prypiat at the time of the explosion and eventual evacuation and Kyiv physicist Dmytro Grodzinsky, who denounces the IAEA's swallowing of Soviet disinformation in the accident's aftermath. The author fills out the narrative with some engaging patter about everyday life in Ukraine on the cusp of becoming post-Soviet and his experiences as a hapless traveling Westerner.

The Legacy of Chernobyl

Zhores Medvedev

(New York: W.W. Norton: 1990), 352 pp.; ISBN 0-393-02802-X, $24.95 hardcover.

A former Soviet scientist exiled to London describes the official mismanagement of information that laid the foundation for the accident.

The book includes an examination of the consequences of the catastrophe, including evacuation procedures, environmental impact and fighting the reactor fire. The author asserts that the disaster forced the regime's hand in moving toward a broadening of glasnost, but remains skeptical of the extent the Soviet Union had become an open society.

Dr. Medvedev argues that secrecy is endemic to the nuclear industry, outlining the U.S. government's lies about exposure of servicemen to radiation at test sites, and at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the exposure of 600,000 workers in nuclear weapons sites.

Mayday at Chernobyl

Henry Hamman, Stuart Parrot

(London: New English Library, 1987), 278 pp.; ISBN 0450-40858-2, price not available.

Two staffers of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty teamed up to write this highly readable account of the disaster, and provide copious background information. Taking the May Day parades in Kyiv and Moscow of 1986 as a point of departure, they examine the Soviet regime's predilection for defensiveness, secrecy and deception they trace back to Stalin's rule, then give an account of the disaster itself and the Soviet approach to nuclear energy, accidents and industrial pollution.

As part of the background, a chapter titled "The Dragon's Tail" examines humanity's experience with radiation's harmful effects from the late 19th century onward.

Also described are the "liquidation" and evacuation efforts, the controversial role of Dr. Robert Gale, the U.S. bone-marrow transplant specialist, the chaos engendered in Europe by varied response to the tragedy by governments, and the International Atomic Energy Agency's history and actions in the aftermath.

No Breathing Room: The Aftermath of Chernobyl

Grigori Medvedev (translated by Evelyn Rossiter; introduction by David R. Marples.)

(New York: Basic Books, 1993), 213 pp.; ISBN 0-465-05114-6, $20 hardcover.

In a memoiristic account, the former nuclear engineer evokes the atmosphere of the USSR's dying days, with anoxia (oxygen deprivation in the brain) setting in among the members of its top echelon. Mr. Medvedev describes his efforts to get the manuscript of "The Truth About Chernobyl" published, and Academician Andrei Sakharov's efforts to help him.

Mr. Medvedev captures the regime's pathological refusal to face reality in describing a meeting with a grotesquely anti-Semitic official Lev Maksymov, a symbol of the Soviet bureaucracy of the Brezhnev period. The previous book's enthusiasm for Mikhail Gorbachev is notably absent.

Reassessing nuclear power

Christopher Flavin

(Washington: Worldwatch Institute, 1987), 91 pp.; ISBN 0-916468-76-3, $5.

This influential and much quoted essay drew on the author's meetings with "officials and experts in six European countries during August 1986, and attendance at the September 1986 meeting of the IAEA." It records a moment in the immediate aftermath of Chornobyl, when the worldwide backlash against nuclear power seemed poised to drive it into oblivion.

Mr. Flavin, a renewable energy researcher, concluded, "The deliberate and planned abandonment of nuclear power would not indicate humanity's decline, but rather its advancement."

Something in the Wind: Politics after Chernobyl

Louis Mackay, Mark Thompson eds.

(London: Pluto Publishing, 1988), 240 pp.; ISBN, price not available.

This book reads like the artifact of the disarmament anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s that it is, but is instructive nonetheless. Its contributors, many of them members of the European Nuclear Disarmament (END) group, provide a comparative look at the Soviet, Western and Third World nuclear industries, address the issue of state and industry secrecy, and dispute the notion of "fundamental differences" between Soviet-designed and Western reactors.

Zhores Medvedev, the academician-defector contributed the article, "The Road to Chornobyl," in which he traces a seemingly inexorable evolutionary line in Soviet nuclear policy right up to the iccident on April 26, 1986.

The Social Impact of the Chernobyl Disaster

David R. Marples

(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), 313 pp.; ISBN 0-312-02432-0, $16.95 hardcover.

According to the preface, this book was written because "certain Soviet accounts of the accident's aftermath were misleading."

It neatly frames the issues concerning the link between public health and radiation, including the questions of "radiophobia," the spate of abortions sought by women living in affected areas, and assesses different views of casualty figures. Other chapters focus on environmental impact, images of the disaster in literature and the media, economic consequences (taking up where the author's previous work on Soviet nuclear power left off), and the political impact of the Chornobyl technicians' trials.

Two sections deal with the way in which the aftermath was becoming embedded in the society's structure - the management of the exclusion zone, and issues of resettlement of evacuees in Zelenyi Mys and Slavutych.

The book concludes with a look at the intensifying debate over nuclear power.

The Truth About Chernobyl

Grigori Medvedev (translated by Evelyn Rossiter, foreword by Andrei Sakharov)

(New York: Basic Books, 1991), 274 pp.; ISBN 0-465-08776-0, $12 paperback.

The appearance of this book in 1989, written by a former section chief of the USSR's Ministry of Energy and Electrification and a member of the Chornobyl power station's construction team, was a watershed in the empire's history.

A minutely detailed account of the catastrophe, focusing on the days of April 25 to May 8, 1986, Mr. Medvedev draws on his knowledge as an insider and countless testimonies of workers and officials puts the reader in the doomed reactor's control room as the technicians dither, in the helicopters flying above after the explosion, on the power station's roof with the firefighters, among clean-up workers in the zone whose skin begins to show signs of a "nuclear tan," amid frenzied meetings of Communist Party and local administration officials.

The book closes with a quote from Dr. Andrei Vorobyov, a leukemia specialist: "Anyone who wants to live in the nuclear era has got to create a new culture, a whole new mindset."

Ukraine: From Chernobyl to Sovereignty

Roman Solchanyk, editor, (foreword by Norman Stone)

(Edmonton: CIUS Press, 1992), 174 pp.; ISBN 0-920862-82-2, $19.95 hardcover.

A collection of interviews conducted by staffers of the RFE/RL services on the political ferment leading to Ukraine's declaration of independence. Concerning the focus topic, Dr. David Marples interviewed Yuriy Risovany, head of the Prypiat Industrial and Research Association's international department and an author of a book about global perceptions of the Chornobyl accident, during the latter's visit to Canada in September 1990.

The outfit Mr. Rysovany heads was responsible for the coordination of research inside the 30-kilometer exclusion zone. He offers opinions on the soundness of the sarcophagus encasing the stricken reactor, on equipment installed to monitor conditions in the remaining nuclear fuel pile, on pressures from the environmental movement that resulted in the moratorium on construction of new nuclear plants, and the new settlements at Slavutych (a contaminated site) and Zelenyi Mys.

Unchained Reactions: Chernobyl, Glasnost and Nuclear Deterrence

Arthur T. Hopkins

(Washington: Diane Publishing, 1994), 151 pp.; ISBN 0-7881-1257-0, $45, trade paperback.

Written by a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, this volume provides a somewhat surreal excursion into the military mind accustomed to "thinking the unthinkable" - fighting a nuclear war.

While it provides a workmanlike examination of the disaster and its repercussions for the Soviet regime, the book concludes with the macabre suggestion that among the lessons of the Chornobyl accident is that "retaliatory forces don't have to contain gigatons of nuclear weapons in order to deter aggression. (In fact, they may not need any, if combatants ignore the Geneva Protocols and threaten to attack nuclear power plants.)"

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 9, 1996, No. 23, Vol. LXIV

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